Why the National Park Service Plans
The National Park Service plans for one purpose: to ensure that the decisions it makes will carry out, as effectively and efficiently as possible, its mission
to preserve unimpaired the natural and cultural resources and values of the National Park System for the enjoyment, education, and inspiration of this and future generations, and to cooperate with partners to extend the benefits of natural and cultural resource conservation and outdoor recreation throughout this country and the world.
In carrying out this mandate, NPS managers constantly make difficult decisions about how to preserve significant natural and cultural resources and recreational opportunities, how to resolve competing demands for these limited resources, priorities for using available funds and staff, local interests as opposed to nationwide interests, and differing views of what is most important. How can the fragile Everglades ecosystem be protected? How much public use can be accommodated at the Windows area of Arches National Park before resources are threatened or visitor experiences become less than desired? What type of visitor experiences are desirable at Gettysburg? What types of facilities and services are necessary and appropriate at Independence Hall? What role should Zion National Park play in its surrounding ecosystem and cultural setting?
The National Park Service conducts planning to meet a number of legal requirements, all intended to support the best possible decision making for the agency and the public it serves. Planning provides tools and methods for resolving conflicts and promoting positive solutions — solutions, for example, that not only strike a balance between public use and resource protection, but that articulate how public enjoyment of the parks can be part of a strategy for ensuring that resources are protected for future generations. Planning provides an opportunity to define a park’s role in relation to its ecosystem, historic setting, and community, as well as its role in a national system of protected areas. This helps park managers and staffs consider how the park will interrelate with its neighbors and others in systems that are ecologically, socially, and economically sustainable.
As the world becomes increasingly complicated and fast-paced, the success of the National Park Service will increasingly depend upon the abilities of its employees to continuously process new information and use it creatively, often in partnership with others, to resolve complex and constantly changing issues. Within this working environment, planning provides a logical, trackable rationale for decision making by asking decision makers to first define why a park exists and what conditions should exist there before thinking about specific actions. These early phases of planning provide a touchstone that allows management teams to constantly adapt their actions to changing conditions while staying focused on what is most important about the park. Thus planning imposes a balance between continuity and adaptability in a dynamic decision-making process.
Planning also ensures that decision makers have adequate information about benefits, environmental and socioeconomic impacts, and costs, helping ensure that every project and activity not only contributes to accomplishing mission, but does so in a way that minimizes adverse environmental impacts and is cost-effective.
As sites with a great deal of symbolic value to the American public, national parks are often the focus of intense emotions. Planning helps ensure that everyone who has a stake in the outcome of a decision has an opportunity to be involved in the planning process and understands decisions as they are being made. Public involvement throughout the planning process provides focused opportunities for park managers and the planning team to interact with the public and to learn about public concerns, expectations, and values. Understanding the values that people hold in relation to park resources and visitor experiences is often the key to success in creating plans that can be implemented. Public involvement also provides opportunities for public officials to share information about park purposes and significance and opportunities and constraints regarding management of park lands and surrounding areas.
The public and their elected representatives are increasingly concerned about how scarce tax dollars are being spent and what results are being achieved. Planning helps assure and document that management decisions are promoting efficient use of public funds, and that managers are accountable to the public for those decisions. The ultimate outcome of planning for national parks is an agreement among the National Park Service, its partners, and the public on why each area is managed as part of the national park system, what resource conditions and visitor experiences should exist there, and how those conditions can best be achieved and maintained over time.